'The best of these studios are equipped with the same cameras, louse, and printing machines, etc., as the' largest studios in Hollywood, and therefore are exceedingly well furnished as regards apparatus. It is in their laboratory work that they are weakest, however, as this is something more than apparatus and requires know-Jedge of a high order, scrupulous clean-lines and the utmost care.
Technically the resulting films cannot be compared with those produced abroad but this is hardly a matter for surprise and is not a matter of great importance for the Chinese market (for Chinese consumption) as the films being purely Chinese in conception and style make a strong appeal to the natives.
There is no doubt that within a short time locally-produced pictures will be a serious factor in the cinema market of China, and will be actively competing with foreign films all over the country. This is a good thing because to the vast majority of the Chinese the foreign produetions are largely unintelligible, centring, as they usually do, around a strong lov: interest. -To the average Chinese it is. inexplicable that everybody should be so concerned about, the tribulations of some pair of lovers that they must needs erect the whole story around them!
Chinese scenarios are either melodramas of a wildly thrilling nature or comedies of the slap-stick variety. But in every instance there is a moral to adorn the tale and this moral is invariably a very sound one. Virtue comes into its own and the villain meets with his just deserts and everything ends hapily.
It is therefore all to the good of China that these films should achieve a wide distribution as they introduce an element of old-fashioned morality and sound teaching which may prove most useful during these distracted times. The plots show family life idealized, devotion to parents, triumph of good over evil, ete., and illustrate the good characteristics of the Chinese as exemplified in the classics. The latter seem somewhat obscure to foreign eyes by the confusion of recent years, but are undoubtedly an ingrained Quality of the people. In other words, the scenarios are entirely Chinese and Western influence is confined to the sur-soundings inescapable when producing in Shangh:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.